The Grady Bunch

Anybody who knows his or her Brady Bunch will remember when Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby and Cindy formed a singing group in order to go on the Pete Sterne Amateur Hour and win the money to buy their parents a sparkly anniversary present. They named their act after the gift they had their eye on: the Silver Platters.

Now as then, we’re talking good wholesome Friday night entertainment for the entire family.

It’s usually a sunshine day when the Mets play the Phillies. It’s Us 12, Them 5 thus far this season, including an 11-3 mark dating back to Mother’s Day, which would make Carol Brady pleased as punch. This is the matchup that’s kept the 2014 Mets barely aloft. Subtract the Phillies from the Mets’ schedule and we’re rooting for a team that’s on pace to win a paltry 70 ballgames for the entire year. Thanks to Philadelphia not withdrawing from the National League East, we’re looking at a good 76 victories, not to mention gripping a place other than last.

You take what you can get. What the Mets got Friday was a success born almost entirely of their opponents’ failure. Not that Jacob deGrom didn’t comb the Phillies out of his ’do with little ado over seven one-run innings (none earned), but since when does that matter to a Mets starting pitcher? He wasn’t getting supported by his hitters, which made him no different from his lesser-coiffed buddies Niese and Wheeler the last two nights. Jacob seemed destined to put in his curlers burdened by a no-decision when lightning struck.

There was no lightning over Flushing, actually, but I’m assuming something got between Grady Sizemore’s glove and the two-out short fly ball Juan Lagares popped into his general vicinity. The Mets had the bases loaded, which sounds more impressive than it was. There was a walk, a steal, a hit by pitch, and another walk. By standing in place, three Mets converted their existence into a potential collective scoring threat.

They would have provided no more than the basis for philosophical pondering — if the Mets fall to Phillies, should they be left in a forest? — had not Sizemore’s glove proven so cooperative. A putout that appeared to carry no more than a 10% chance of Castilloing turned into a drop that put two runs on the Mets’ half of the board. Then, for extra fun, Lagares from first and Eric Campbell from third effected a double-steal, which translates to WHOA, A STEAL OF HOME,an achievement that is always astounding.

So a little baserunning, a little contact and some well-advised taking added up to three runs that turned a 1-1 deadlock into a 4-1 Mets lead that that Jeurys Familia and Jenrry Mejia sewed up for deGrom. Perhaps newbie second baseman Dilson Herrera, the 14-year-old called up from a nearby playground, thinks the Mets win like this all the time.

No moment like this one to inaugurate a new tradition. What does Herrera (who’s actually 20 and alighted from Double-A Binghamton) know from the Mets not winning? He was the most neo of the neophytes, but he wasn’t exactly alone in being relatively new on the MLB scene. Six of the nine players in the Met lineup had never participated in the big leagues before last year. They may not all work out in the end, but when your immediate goal is not falling a half-game behind the decrepit Phillies, you might as well trot out your youth and commence to judging whether it’s capable of maturing.

To be discouragingly accurate, there turned out to be not a whole lot in front of Anderson Hernandez, a slick-gloved middle infielder who barely hit, went away, came back around and then slipped into the annals of inconsequentiality. Nevertheless, you can’t but help want to look ahead to something when all you have to look down on is the Phillies. We’ve looked ahead, since 2013 started going nowhere, to Juan Lagares, Wilmer Flores, Travis d’Arnaud, Matt den Dekker, Jacob deGrom and Dilson Herrera. Friday night we looked at all of them on the same field. And they won. Or they accepted the win when it was presented to them by a Phillie who, like most Phillies, seems old enough to be their father.

***

The only downside to the unanticipated debut of Herrera, besides Murphy having to get hurt for it to happen, is it brings to an end a somewhat historic streak. I say “somewhat,” because I’m the only one who probably noticed or cared about the history that was being made.

As mentioned a few weeks ago when it first drew my attention, the Mets had gone quite a spell without inducting a wholly new player into the Metropolitan ranks. On June 10, Taylor Teagarden made his Met debut. Then, from June 11 through August 28, nobody made his Met debut. In this era when somebody we’d either waited breathlessly for or had barely heard of was disrupting our personnel files on a semi-regular basis, the silence grew eerie. Nobody had followed Teagarden onto the all-time roster, which sat frozen at 981 across the summer.

Herrera broke the ice when he donned No. 2 and became Met No. 982. The drought or deep freeze or whichever climatological Met-aphor you choose was over after 71 games. How did that stack up against similar dearths of debuts?

Pretty impressively. With help from Baseball Reference and some source material Ultimate Mets Database graciously shared with me, I am able to tell you the Teagarden-to-Herrera fallow period was a) the longest by a Met club in 26 years; and b) the sixth-longest in team history. Because you’re dying to know more, here are the Top 10 gaps between Met debuts.

The common thread that ties each of these streaks together, as far as I can tell, is absolutely nothing. You see some great Met years (including the two best) and some uninspiring Met years. You see names you identify as all-time Mets and names you’ve likely purged from your memory if they ever floated up there at all. You will perhaps note the oddity of the gap Teagarden-Herrera passed last — Apodaca-Aker — and wonder if it’s correct. Yup, it is: the Mets entered 1974 without committing a wholly new player to their roster, the only time that’s ever happened in these parts. Imagine waiting until June to mint a Met in 2015 and then discovering that it’s a journeyman reliever à la Aker.

Also worth noting, since we’re noting any of this, is two of these spells were punctuated somewhere in the middle by Recidivist Mets (onetime Mets who, like Anderson Hernandez in 2009, found their way home from some other team to their natural Metsian habitat). Bob L. Miller returned from eleven years spent elsewhere to add his Stengelesed right arm to the pennant push on September 26, 1973; exiled heartthrob Lee Mazzilli resumed wearing the only uniform that ever suited him (tightly) on August 8, 1986. Miller had last been a Met in 1962, Mazzilli in 1981, so they felt new, but they weren’t really.

13 comments to The Grady Bunch

This is a lost season except for said player debuts. We can speak badly of the Mets finances ad nauseam, particularly when thinking about yet another ‘wait til next year’ swoon. But the truth is this team has always been snakebit when it comes to big ticket signings. Granderson and Wright are not playing up to their contracts. So why sign another big bat that will likely torpedo the moment he dons the blue and orange? I know Dilson went 0-fer but I’d probably already be willing to go with him in 2015 and trade Murphy and an arm for a team controlled young guy at short. If he can hit in the .280 range and reduce the bonehead defense, while saving 8-10 million I think it’s worthwhile. What do we have to lose, more games? Seems inevitable anyway.

Yeah, the overall trend is awful. I’m even holding out hope that Conforto might be able to rise quickly and gets plugged into left. I know Sandy gets his share of crap, but I do like the idea of a work smarter, not harder approach to the GM role. I feel a lot of these big budget teams are going to be hurt by the albatross contracts the next couple years (Yanks, Angels, Dodgers). I’d rather see the Mets go in the opposite direction even if it’s necessary because of the Wilpons dubious finances. This team is going through a culture change and it’s tough to watch sometimes, but the payoff might actually be worth it.

With the exception of den Dekker, that lineup last night (including the pitchers) is the Beta version of the next generation of the Mets. It took a long time to develop, it got rolled out a little early, we don’t have a Left Field app, our Shortstop app is wonky, there are still some bugs with the new technology, and there are some challenges making the old technology work as it should, but that’s the product they’re going to market with. I don’t mean that in a bad way….I mean that in an “embryo of something good” way.

Although he doesn’t even have the excuse of a concussion I think we have to give Grandy at least a second year. It’s unfortunate that it came when he was trying to make a good first impression, and it’s true that some people are calling David Wright washed-up, but most people are just willing to accept this as David’s bad year and assume he’ll bounce back in ’15. Grandy should be given the same consideration. After all, Beltran put up a sub-par first year with the club (although it was only mediocre, not a stinker like Grandy’s).

Team doesn’t have a choice but to give him a 2nd year, and probably a 3rd too, because now he’s untradeable and there are no prospects ready to step in. But I thought right from the start the Mets overspent on Granderson, he was coming off an injury filled season, and I always take the stats of guys who played in extreme hitters park with a huge grain of salt, especially coming to play at Fred’s Outfield Where Home Runs Die. He still owes Beltran’s adjust-to-NYC year 50 points (heck, even Bay hit .259 his 1st year here), and at 33, how much is he going to improve throughout the remainder of his contract? This isn’t going to end well.

The thing that kills me is that some people, most notably the GM, are likely to hold up Granderson (not to mention Chris Young) as an example of why free agents can’t help the club. I don’t know, I’ve seen other ones do well…maybe somebody doesn’t pick the right free agents.

It’s unfathomable that in an era of statically evaluation and advanced scouting methods, a player one subway fare distant couldn’t be dissected to ascertain his true value…The Yankees have a short right porch…The wind blows out…The guy historically wiffs like a pinwheel on PCP! …Who didn’t foresee this is the question. Yeh, we broke the Chazar bank on the big ticket acquisition and deluded the desperate among us with sleight of hand and misdirection, but this was all too predictable. Now we have this gregarious cement block fixed tight on our ankle and Guido Anderson is pushing us over the side of the rowboat. ..wait till 2018. ..”ya gotta something or other”

And after Delgado which free agent shined for Los Mets…Colon I’ll give you…we just got out from under Flushing Bay, wasn’t that lesson enough…spend more on a sure thing…If there exists such an individual. ..not Tulo. ..nor Cargo…or Hardy or Castro..not Blitzer or Dasher either!…no Miggy no “ether”, no Cruger or flying anythings…perhaps we can trade junior and Hunters Point outright for Giancarlo

FROM OUR BASEBALL LIBRARY

Amazin' Again: How the 2015 New York Mets Brought the Magic Back to Queens by Greg Prince is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.

Volume I of The Happiest Recap: 50+ Years of the New York Mets As Told in 500+ Amazin' Wins by Greg Prince is available in print and for Kindle on Amazon.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History by Greg Prince (foreword by Jason Fry), is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.